JAMES BARNWELL BLUE

By Wm H Newman; M J Clements; G W Cambron, 1886

James Barnwell Blue, was born in Union County, Kentucky,
January 9, 1826. He has a good common school education, and was an Old Line
Whig until the collapse of that party, then a Democrat. he has been a professor
of religion for forty years; first a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church
South, and about the year 1868 joined the Old School Presbyterians, and is now
one of its elders. Has been a member of the Masonic order for forty years-a
charter member. He has traveled considerably, having visited twelve different
States of the Union and quite all of the principal cities; was County Road
Supervisor for four years and in 1875 was elected to the State Legislature.

Mr. Blue's Masonic record is good; was Grand High Priest of
Kentucky; twice representative of the Grand Chapter of Kentucky in the General
Grand Chapter of the United States; was High Priest of Union Chapter, No. 54,
for fifteen years. As a hunter Mr. Blue proved himself quite ad adept with his
rifle, killing many deer and turkeys. securing as many as five of the former in
one day. Game was very plentiful at that time. Mr. Blue now lives upon one of
the finest farms in the county. the tract embraces some 600 acres; takes great
delight in stock and makes fine crops; in fact, is a good farmer-citizen and a
worthy gentleman. His children are as follows: Mary H. married J. V. Cromwell;
both dead, leaving a son and daughter, Murray M. and Maggie B. Solomon W.
married Lillie B. Norton; she dying, he married her sister, Maggie A. Norton.

The subject's father was Solomon Blue, born in Berkley
County, Virginia, in 1782, came to Union in 1803; fought in the War of 1812,
and died in Morganfield in 1867, aged eighty-five years His mother,
Mahaly (Kerney) Blue, was born in Virginia in 1790; came to Union and married
Solomon Blue in 1820, and died on the farm in 1832. Subject's paternal
grandfather, James Blue, was with Washington at Braddock's defeat. His maternal
grandfather was with Washington in the Revolution.

His wife, Margaret (Muir) Blue was born in Nelson County,
Kentucky, in 1833, and married James B. blue in 1852. Her father, William Muir,
was born at St. Mary, Indiana, in 1792; married Mary (Hester) Muir and died in
1864. John W. Blue, a brother, married a Miss Fannie Baldwin and is a
practicing attorney of some celebrity, living in Marion, Crittenden County,
Kentucky. Another brother, Reuben, died when a young man. She also had a
sister, Margaret, who married James I. Faree, both deceased. Solomon
Blue, the father of the subject of this memoir, deserves more than a passing
notice, as the writer of this article knew him for many years personally. After
the death of his first wife, Mahaly (Kerney) Blue, he married elizabeth Ralph,
nee Finnie. To them was born a daughter, Rachel Ann, who married M. M.
Lynch, now of this county. Major Blue, as all of his day called him, was a man
in more than one sense, brave, generous and true; a man of fine size, muscular,
as straight as an Indian, of indomitable energy and perseverance. It has been
more than once said by the old lawyers of the Morganfield bar that they would
rather have Major Blue for a client than any man they knew of. He was a good
talker, fond of company, and loved his friends. At his death he possessed
considerable real estate, and left his children independent. It is needless to
say more, perhaps, only it is impossible to conjecture to what eminence he
might have attained had he been educated.